ANACONDA — After draining the first free throw of a one-and-one last Saturday against Three Forks, Anaconda's Meela Mitchell was momentarily perplexed when her head coach, Andy Saltenberger, called a timeout.
But the senior quickly realized why he wanted a pause — to acknowledge what she had just accomplished.
With that free throw, Mitchell became the fifth player in Copperhead girls basketball history to score 1,000 career points. Heading into this season she knew she was close but made it clear she didn't want to know any specific numbers.
"I didn't know, no idea," Mitchell said after the game. "I knew I wanted it to be a surprise. Just having that number hang over my head has been very stressful and a sensitive topic."
And as she and her teammates exchanged smiles and hugs during that celebratory timeout, a feeling of relief washed over her.
"People always talk about how great it is, but they don't talk about how stressful it is getting there," Mitchell said of reaching the scoring milestone. "And when you're close and you're not sure what game it's gonna happen in, there's a lot of extra pressure. It's awesome to finally have it crossed off the list."
Mitchell now joins Ali Hurley (1,698 career points), Torry Hill (1,496), Courtney Moodry (1,069) and Makena Patrick (1,018) as the only Copperhead girls to hit that 1,000-point threshold. She scored 37 points as a freshman, 363 as a sophomore, and then erupted for 563 last season as the Copperheads returned to the state tournament for the first time since the 2020-21 season.
"Meela was kind of behind the 8-ball as a freshman because the program was so good," said Blake Hempstead, Anaconda's longtime play-by-play announcer. "It was tough to get her on the floor because Anaconda was deep and talented. But at (the Western B) divisional we saw what Meela could be."
She's also now Anaconda's 18th all-time leading scorer, girl or boy. At the top of that list is former University of Montana linebacker Braxton Hill, who spent his high school senior basketball season surpassing Wayne Estes and Ed Kalafat, his sister Torry, and Scott, Rob and Ali Hurley.
There's a lot of notable names on that list, and Mitchell is honored to be linked to these players that she grew up idolizing, especially Estes who was — and still is — a larger-than-life figure in the Smelter City.
"I've read books about him, I see his picture every time I go into the gym, which is all the time," said Mitchell. "So I'm super pleased that my name is even in the same conversation with theirs."
